[lit-ideas] Re: Life or death

Ah, Irene.  And who said idealism was the flip side of cynicism  Janus-like?
 
When you do perfect parenting, do give us the secrets.  We're all a  flutter 
to know.
 
For what it's not worth, I agree re. people no longer living naturally, the  
way we were meant to.  But given today's societal givens, it seems moot to  
argue the point.  
 
Julie Krueger
worshipping the sun-god in a swimsuit (wanna talk melanoma?)

========Original Message========
Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Life or death  Date: 4/4/2007 11:25:39 P.M. Central 
Daylight Time  From: _aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    
-----Original Message----- 
From: Carol  Kirschenbaum 
Sent: Apr 4, 2007 3:20 PM 
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx  
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Life or death 


Irene wrote:
"Children  do need more care, with immunizations, ear infections and the 
like, but there's  little excuse for most adults. "

ck: Huh? Are you serious? "Little  excuse" for what--for getting sick? 



A.A. Define sick.   Colds, i.e., viruses, are not treatable by modern 
medicine.  Antibiotics  treat what they treat.  What you're referring to as 
sick are 
the  degenerative diseases, i.e., diabetes, diverticulosis/diverticulitis, 
heart  disease, cancer, stuff like that.  Those are virtually completely  
preventable.  There is no reason for anyone in this country to have a  
degenerative 
disease, yet degenerative diseases are  rampant.


C.K.  The administration ("conservatives") would have  us all believe that 
everyone would be fine in this country if we only ate less  and exercised. 


A.A. I haven't heard them say this, but if they're  saying it, they're right. 
 If we ate a lot less and a lot different, i.e.,  ate the way the body was 
designed by evolution to eat, and exercised a lot more,  things would be very 
different.  Even a 5% reduction in weight results in  something like a 50% 
reduction in the amount of insulin needed.  The body  is a machine.  Treat your 
machines right and they'll treat you right.   If you put diesel into a gasoline 
car, it wouldn't be long before it stalled on  you.  Who would you blame?  
That's exactly what's happening to  people.


C.K.  Obesity as the new Black Death,  


A.A.  Absolutely.  Obese people even survive serious car  accidents in 
smaller numbers than normal weight people.


C.K.   the omnipotent cause that's All Our Fault. 


A.A. And whose fault is  being overfed and undernourished?  You want the 
government to exercise for  you?


C.K.  This media campaign (which you've bought into,  apparently) 


A.A. I don't know what you're referring to.  Health  care is basically 
ignored by the administration.  I've never seen anything  for or against 
healthcare 
in my reading.


C.K.  is actually  shoddy excuse for a genuine health care system. 


A.A.  Actually,  you've got it backwards.  A genuine health care system is a 
shoddy excuse  for keeping the body running properly.  We need healthcare for 
what  healthcare is designed to do, i.e., set bones, give antibiotics.  It's 
not  going to make up for bad genes and in no way will it even come close to 
making  up for properly maintaining the body through proper nutrition and  
exercise.


C.K.  Not that obesity is good, or that it doesn't  cause some problems, but 
low weight does not obviate the need for medical  treatment, of course. 


A.A.  Obesity is, quite literally,  death.  There is no medical care that can 
undo it for longer than  temporarily.  Caloric restriction and low weight do 
in fact often, if not  usually, obviate the need for medical treatment.  They 
actually keeps the  body biologically younger than more generously nourished 
counterparts.   Exercise too.  Use or lose it.  


C.K.  I referred to  my asthmatic friend in her 50s specifically because she 
represented, if you  will, a classic case. 


A.A. Asthma is a strange disease.  Your  friend needs to figure out what's 
triggering her.  Often asthma is a way of  somatizing emotional problems.  Our 
bodies speak to us if we'd  listen.  Is you friend feeling smothered by 
something in her life?  A  crummy job, a bad relationship?  Does she have a lot 
of 
unexpressed anger  (which she's not aware of, most likely from childhood) that 
her body is telling  to deal with?  Or does she have allergies?  There's also a 
lot of  evidence that Vitamin D (in much, much higher quantities than is 
currently  recommended) is a powerful anti-inflammatory.  Asthma is caused by 
inflamed  airways.  Vitamin D (misnamed a vitamin, it's actually a hormone 
produced  in the skin by the sun) is found in every cell of the body.  We 
evolved in  
the sun but spend our time in offices, which is to say we're very deficient 
in  it.  Vitamin D is associated with reduced rates of absolutely everything,  
from osteoporosis to multiple sclerosis (unknown on the equator), to 
Parkinson's  disease to allergies to you name it.  Modern people are very 
undersupplied 
 with this critical substance.  In fact, they think now that the reason that  
isolating people with tuberculosis in sanatoriums worked is because they 
would  sit them in the sun and the Vitamin D that was produced allowed the 
immune  
system to function properly and heal the person.  The point is, just  
medicating asthma without finding out the cause is good for the pharmaceutical  
industry, not for your friend in the long run. Most likely she'll have to do 
her  
own sleuthing.


C.K.  She worked throughout her hard life,  paycheck to paycheck. A host of 
rotten diseases tend to hit people in their 40s  and 50s, often due to medical 
neglect. (Caught early, many diseases are easily  managed, medically and by 
lifestyle. Later, they're costly and disabling, like  severe asthma.)



A.A.  Again, it isn't medical neglect, it's  a lifetime of dietary neglect, 
emotional neglect, etc.  We don't live the  way we were designed to live, not 
even close, so we get  sick.


C.K.  Irene scoffed at gaining a mere six years of life  from advanced 
medical treatment. 


A.A. He spent six years in cancer  treatment, surgery, chemo, radiation and 
it spread anyway.  Not my idea of  quality of life.


C.K.  What about the increased quality of life  before death, from years of 
regular medical care? 


A.A. Again, not  from medical care, never from medical care, but from self 
care.   


C.K.  What about treatment that allows someone to work--mental  illnesses 
come to mind--versus no treatment, that lands a poor soul on the  street, 
babbling to herself? 


A.A. Now we agree.  We need to put  tremendous emphasis on mental health.  
The mind is expressed in the  body.  And we need to teach parenting so that 
mental issues aren't built  into the picture from the beginning.  



C.K.  And what  about this "basic screening" for colon cancer and breast 
cancer, among others?  Catch a tumor early and it's not necessarily 
a cancer. But uninsured,  working poor people wait until they can afford the 
treatment (which is  EXPENSIVE--meaning, a huge chunk of what's left when you 
work at Wal-Mart).  


A.A.  Well, that's where Dr. Hadler will take issue with  you.  Tumors caught 
early are easier to treat.  The problem is that  all the quality studies show 
(according to Dr. Hadler) that testing doesn't  extend life by any 
appreciable amount.


C.K.  ... No dental care.  


A.A. That does need to be provided.


C.K.  Free meds  from those philanthropic pharmaceutical companies, for a 
while.  


A.A.  Oxymoron, philanthropic pharmaceutical companies.   They hook even 
children on all sorts of drugs.  They're out for  themselves.  Plus reliance on 
pills is a distraction away from the real  issues of, among other things, 
proper 
nutrition and  exercise.


C.K.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out how the  lack of health care 
factors into a deep spiral of joblessness and poverty. Take  teeth! The sole 
dental care for Medicaid patients (in this region) is teeth  pulling. No 
fixing, 
just pulling. Same for the uninsured--and here's where age  tends to be a 
tipping factor. Ever notice the toothlessness among homeless  people, for 
instance? 
Before those teeth were pulled, somehow, there was pain.  Maybe abscesses 
(commonly leads to sepsis and death, unbeknownst to most of us).  So that 
person 
with rather unsightly teeth has been ill. Now he's got no front  teeth. (If 
the back teeth are gone, he's probably got serious digestive  problems.) A 
person with bad or missing teeth is less attractive than others,  and less 
likely 
to land that job offering benefits. Less health care when  needed. Less and 
less time spent working vs suffering in pain, as stamina  decreases. Get the 
picture? 


A.A.  I said dental needs to be  provided, and emotional health.  Jobs too 
are a huge problem.  We  could generate wonderful jobs just cleaning up the 
environment.  Instead we  concentrate on McMonster houses and other nonsense.  
Our 
values are  completely screwed up.  Regarding mental health services, I 
daresay that  98% of everybody will say there's nothing wrong with them 
emotionally 
and they  won't go for treatment even if it was available.  I think rather 
than get  so excited about healthcare, we need to make fundamental structural 
changes in  eliminating fast food as we know it, subsidizing fruits and 
vegetables instead  of corn fed meat products, giving incentives for exercise 
and not 
smoking,  teaching parenting, even licensing people before they take up 
raising little  humans.  Then not only will healthcare become a minor issue but 
the 
prisons  would empty out, gangs would no longer be necessary and on and on.  
But the  way things are now, that's pie in the sky, pure fantasy.  

Just a  fun fact.  The USDA spends something like five million dollars a year 
 (don't hold me to that number, but it's very low) advertising its 5 a Day 
for  Health, while the food industry spends in the billions advertising all the 
 
greasy, sleezy stuff that they sell that people think is delicious.  About  
10-15 years ago restaurant meals were in the range of 1,000 calories and health 
 authorities were warning that it was too much; today restaurant meals are in 
the  range of 2,000 calories and up, none of it in the form of vegetables.  
Home  portion sizes follow suit.   There's no amount of healthcare that will  
offset  that.

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